“...he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed, while others reap and sow in his stead.”― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Norfolk, Virginia, December 18, 1903
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| Alpheus Drinkwater claimed he forwarded the first telegram announcing the "first flight." He very well may have, but it wasn't the famous one to the Wright's father--it was to their sister. Harry Moore was the cub reporter who broke the news of Orville's "flight" to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. |
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The "official" version is what the Wrights guessed, because they apparently never knew the whole truth. They figured that when they telegraphed the news to their father from Kitty Hawk to Norfolk, Virginia, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the telegraph operator(s) must have spilled the story to the press, despite the Wrights' direct request to keep the matter quiet.1
From our research, as evidenced here, it's much more likely that the reporter was protecting his sources and the sources were protecting each other. Please see the two preceding blog posts.
In Wilbur and Orville by Fred Howard, we are given two possible variations of the Wrights' version. The first scenario is that the telegrapher in Norfolk, Virginia (he names as Gray) shared the news with aspiring reporter Harry P. Moore, who then called long distance to pin down facts. Howard admits that there were a number of actual facts in the article other than those in the telegram. How they were obtained, he's not certain.2
In a second possible version that Fred Howard says was accepted later, the news was revealed, not to Moore, but to Ed Dean, who covered the Weather Bureau for the "Virginian-Pilot." Harry Moore didn't even arrive at the paper, he says, until that evening; and Dean and Keville Glennan, the city editor, had already written the story and were ready to set it into type. According to Howard, it was then that Moore asked them if they knew about the flights. "Moore was not even a reporter at the time....and it was never clear how he managed to hear of the flights." 3
In The Bishop's Boys, Tom Crouch gives credit to Ed Dean, who he says "was a friend of Jim Gray, the Norfolk operator Joe Dosher had asked to relay the Wrights' message on to Western Union. [Dosher was the operator at Kitty Hawk.] Gray told Dean about the telegram despite his instructions [to keep quiet]. Dean in turn approached his city editor, Keville Glennan, who agreed that the story was too good to pass up. The two men spent the next few hours fleshing out the sparse and enigmatic details of the telegram. Harry Moore, who worked in the Virginian-Pilot circulation department, also took a hand in composing the news account. "4
Crouch continues,"The finished story shows how heavily the three men drew on their imagination to fill in the gaps."5 (As we are seeing, it's apparent that historians similarly invent "facts" to fill in the blanks.--ed.)
But the "official" time line just doesn't fit the statements of the key players in the news story. When we try to correlate all of the stories together with the Wrights' claims, we end up with what author Stephen Kirk in First in Flight calls a "confused mess" 6
Here is Kirk's version of what happened.
"Charles C. Grant was on duty at the Weather Bureau office in Norfolk on December 17, sitting in for the regular man, Jim J. Gray. [As noted, more than one history has Gray manning the telegraph lines, apparently in error] Grant claimed that the first message about the flights came in at eleven in the morning..., and that it was from livesavers Willie Dough and John Daniels, not the Wright brothers. It supposedly read, 'Wrights made a short flight this morning and will try again this afternoon.'"7
From his statement above, it is obvious that author Kirk was aware of Charles C. Grant's affidavit, posted in this blog. But he rejects it as follows:
"This...appears doubtful. The first flight took place just after ten-thirty, and it is unlikely that Dough and Daniels could have conveyed the message to Kitty Hawk by eleven o'clock. Besides their help was needed in carrying the Flyer back from where it landed....aside from Grant's claim, it has never been suggested that Daniels or Dough left the Wright camp and returned between the first and fourth flights."8
In our opinion, author Kirk's errors in interpreting the Grant affidavit are the same errors that continually plague Wright historians in most of their material I have reviewed. They accept as gospel the Wright stories when there is no authentic documentation other than the Wrights' own claims. The Wrights claimed that four flights were made in the morning of December and stuck to that story. Using that story as a basic premise, Kirk has to reject Grant's statement. There are other statements he has to reject, as well.
But another author, Thomas Parramore, does suggest that Life Savers left the camp to relay the story:
"Just how the Pilot obtained its story is often debated. But after the second flight at 11:05 A.M., it appears that Adam Etheridge and John T. Daniels rode briefly over to the lifesaving station. There they wired Harry P. Moore, a Virginian-Pilot reporter to whom they had promised to send word of any powered flights: 'Wrights flew in motor-driven plane 11:20.' (They may have considered the first flight a failure. ) Norfolk telegrapher C. C. Grant relayed the message to Moore..." 9
After Dosher telegraphed the Wrights' famous telegram about 3:00 P. M., Parramore says, "Grant again informed Moore, who then apparently phoned the Kill Devil Hill Life Saving Station. ..
At a Kitty Hawk meeting with Moore in 1928, Orville Wright confirmed that 'when you called the coast guard station...about our flights, the station man turned to me and asked me whether they should tell you....I told them to tell you nothing, but in their enthusiasm they did give out the story and made it a bit stronger than it was...'." 10
Parramore's narration deserves quite a bit of analysis. There are facts that appear incorrect, but at least he sees that there had to be a message sent to Moore in the morning--and about the only way that could have happened is for the Life Savers to leave the camp and phone from the Kill Devil Hills Station. He has them on horseback, not walking. Also, from this account, it's my opinion again that Moore phoned at least once in the morning after the first "flight" and again in the afternoon for more information. The first call was made to the Kill Devil Hills Life Saving Station as soon as he got the telegram from Dough and Daniels about the first flight attempt. The second was to the Kitty Hawk Station in the afternoon while the Wrights were still there after sending their telegram to their father, the Bishop. There was probably a third to Kill Devil Hills to talk to the original witnesses about the 852 foot "flight."
After a subsequent exchange of letters with Glennan, Moore collected the statements published here in this blog to back his story up. They were written by Grant, the telegraph operator in Norfolk at the time (not Jim Gray), and by the newsmen who were there at the paper December 17, 1903, when Moore came in with his story before 2 pm. Dean hadn't picked up on the story until early evening and the Wrights hadn't even sent their famous telegram yet..See preceding blog post for two more of these documents.
Two of these letters follow:
Norfolk, Va. Feb. 3 1929(Italics and emphasis added by editor of truthinaviationhistory)
To Whom It May Concern
I was a member of the Virginian-Pilot news staff on December 17, 1903
and am well acquainted with Harry P. Moore, Keville Glennan and Edward O. Dean.
I was in conference with Mr. Moore, Mr. Glennan, Mr. Kizer and Mr James
A. Pugh, the latter being city editor, when Moore brought in a message from
x, two life savers at Kitty Hawk telling about Orville Wright making the first
flight in a glider equipped with a motor.
It was 1.40 p.m. and Glennan advised all present not to discuss the story
until after the public Ledger had gone to press. He said he believed the "yarn was
just another glider" flight and did not think it would develop into anything big.
About 6:30 p.m. the story came up again when Dean said he had heard
J. Frank Newsome, weather bureau observer, mentioned the telegram received
by Moore early in the day which came over the Government owned seacoast wire
which had its commercial outlet in the weather bureau.
No other newspaper man got any information about the flight except Moore
up to the time Dean visited the weather bureau.
Very truly
Frank S. Wing
Dear Harry
Use this anyway you like and if you want me to write my opinion of
Glennan and his atte,pt [attempt] to take the credit for this story from you, let me know and
I will write you a hummer
FSW
El Centro Printing Co. 670 Main Street(Italics and emphasis added)
El Centro California
October 28, 1950
Harry P. Moore, Esq.
P. O.Box 182
Norfolk, Virginia
Dear Harry:
It is good to have your letter of October 25th and to know
from your own typewriter that you continue
newspaper work.
I feel that it is not only unfair but untrue for anybody
to attempt to dispute the record of your right to first
credit for the story of the Wright Brothers' initial
flight in their biplane at Kill Devil Hill (Kitty Hawk)
North Carolina in 1903.
I was a working newspaper man in Norfolk from 1910 to
June 1917, during the last five years of that period
I was managing editor of the Virginian-Pilot. Nobody (far as I know)
in Norfolk ,while I lived there, challenged the validity
of your then established position as the man who got the
Wright story first, and on the morning of December 17, 1903.
Keville Glennan was a feature writer, and for a time was
Sunday editor of the Virginian-Pilot during my tenure as managing
editor. While I knew Keville, I never heard him claim for
himself or for anybody except you the credit for being first
to get the Wright story.
As you know, I was born (1887) and spent my boyhood within 50 miles of
the spot where the Wrights made aviation history at Kill Devil Hill.
My father had a cottage at Nags Head, a few miles south of the
site of the Wright memorial monument, and I spent every summer
at Nag's Head from the first year of my life until I was 17 years old.
I refer to this background now to indicate my familiarity with
the scene. There was only one telegraph line from the coastal
region along the "banks" between Kill Devil and the outside world,
with Norfolk weather bureau its link to commercial wire lines.
This one outlet at the Norfolk weather bureau was manned in my
years in Norfolk by personnel so loyal in friendship to you that
I always called on you for any news story originating along the
"banks" between Cape Henry and Cape Hatteras. And I know this loyalty
to you had existed for many years.
Write to me when you can find time and tell me more about yourself.
I wish you would tell Joe Pacini's boys to send me a small kit of
corned spots, express collect, and mail me a bill for the fish.
Sincerely,
T. H. Lamb
So to review:
The story behind the story all started when a perspicacious young reporter by the name of Harry Moore happened to overhear some Life Savers from Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, chatting nearby at a shop in Norfolk, Virginia. He made friends with the Life Savers, and they promised to let him know if the Wrights were successful in making a manned, powered flight.
That friendship resulted in Harry Moore nailing the "Scoop of the Century."
Many decades later, Harry Moore's daughter just happened to come across an advertisement that was posted by Steve Fritts, who was looking for an original copy of the now very famous newspaper, the Virginian-Pilot dated December 18, 1903, to add to his collection. It was the first front page newspaper story of the first so called powered and manned flight ever made.
Moore's daughter answered the ad. She didn't have the particular newspaper, which is a rarity for sure, but she produced some primary documents for Steve she had preserved for decades that were justifiably of even more importance, such importance that when the Smithsonian heard of them, they expressed a keen interest. The documents Moore's daughter had saved when studied very carefully are in conflict with the tales that the Wrights broadcast to the world about their first "flights" at Kill Devil Hills December 17, 1903, and the tales that have been picked up and told time and again in countless reams of books and publications.What the Smithsonian would have done with these documents, we'll never know. Maybe they would have tucked them away somewhere in a deep, deep vault far into its enormous, infinite caverns. Eventually no one but a musty old file somewhere would know they were there. But the collector Steve Fritts believed they needed to be shared with the world. At the moment of this publication, they still rest securely in his safety deposit box.
Not so long ago, some of this important information came to light in an article that I happened to read in my excursions through the internet, looking for information on the Wrights' flights. I was finding too many discrepancies about their flight claims to ignore. It was then that I came upon C. G. Grant's documented statement. "Wrights made a short flight this morning and will try again this afternoon." Steve Fritts had shared this story with the world.
__________________
1. Fred C. Kelly. The Wright Brothers (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1989), 102-5.
2. Fred Howard. Wilbur and Orville (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1987), 142-3.
3. Ibid., 143.
4. Tom Crouch. The Bishop's Boys (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1989), 271.
5. Ibid.
6. Stephen Kirk. First in Flight: The Wright Brothers in North Carolina (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair Publisher, 1995), 186.
7. Ibid., 186-7.
8. Ibid., 187.
9. Thomas Parramore. First to Fly: North Carolina and the Beginnings of Aviation (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 97-8.
10. Ibid., 98.
11. Kirk, First in Flight, 295-6.
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